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Drowned cities: Myths and secrets of the deep

DEEP SECRETS

The idea that great cities, rich in forgotten knowledge and treasure, lie hidden beneath the sea holds immense appeal. Scarcely a year goes by without someone claiming to have found Atlantis. But what's really out there under the waves?

Jo Marchant looks at some of the sunken towns and cities discovered worldwide, and separates the facts from the myths.

BUILT ON SAND

On Egypt’s northern coast, where the Nile delta meets the sea, there once stood two cities of such wealth and grandeur that they were famous throughout the ancient world. Today, their remains lie buried beneath a shallow bay. Around 500 BC, the ports of Herakleion and Eastern Canopus were thriving trade centres, the gateways into […]

PIRATE HQ

Notorious as a hotbed of piracy and prostitution, the 17th-century Caribbean town of Port Royal was known as “the wickedest city on Earth”. Then, one day, it was swallowed up by the sea. Port Royal, located at the mouth of Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, was once the biggest English colony in the New World, with a […]

TRACES OF A REVOLUTION

One kilometre out in the Mediterranean Sea, near Haifa, Israel, an ancient village lies hidden beneath the waves. It has been so well preserved by the sandy seabed that weevils sit in the grain stores, human skeletons lie undisturbed in their graves, and a mysterious stone circle still stands as it was first erected. This […]

BUILT BY NATURE?

The tiny Japanese island of Yonaguni, near Taiwan, has become famous for the huge submerged rock structures found near its shores – the ancient city of a lost civilisation, some claim. Imposing sets of steps and terraces rise up through the clear water from around 25 metres depth. The structures, with their flat surfaces and […]

STORY CITY

Everyone has heard of the lost city of Atlantis. The myth began with the Greek philosopher Plato. In 360 BC, he wrote a book whose characters describe Atlantis as an island bigger than “Libya” and “Asia” together, which existed 9000 years earlier “in front of the Pillars of Hercules” that flank the entrance to the […]

HOMERIC HOME PORT

When fleets of ships carrying warriors from all over Greece set off to do battle with the great fortress city of Troy, perhaps some of them sailed from Pavlopetri, the oldest known submerged town. “It was perfectly situated to have been a major stopover,” says Nicholas Flemming, a marine geologist at the University of Southampton, […]

DROWNED CHURCHES

The water was so black that Stuart Bacon couldn’t see the watch on his wrist no matter how bright his diver’s lamp. Then the sediment cleared just enough for him to catch a glimpse of a stone church tower, crawling with hermit crabs, lying on the sea bed. In medieval times, Dunwich was a busy […]